During yesterday’s Grayzone livestream discussion, Top missile guy, with Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté, Max referenced the following profile for Israeli neocon pundit, Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic and recent Signal chat infamy which was published on the S.H.A.M.E. website in 2012. Max mentioned he had contributed to the article. I highly recommend watching their discussion:
S.H.A.M.E. is an acronym for “Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics”.
Given Goldberg’s checkered past and recent infamy, including that he actually published an article at The Atlantic about what he had gleaned from the questionable Signal chat, I feel compelled to reproduce his S.H.A.M.E. profile here for safekeeping and possible future reference. I have also included below, a reposting of Goldberg’s article published by The Atlantic following the alleged Signal chat security breach. He evidently has no shame.
For two decades now, Jeffrey Goldberg has peddled blatantly false war propaganda with disastrous consequences, fronted for the military-industrial machine, played a key PR role pushing America into war with Iraq, and advanced the agenda of the Israeli military-intel establishment—and he has been rewarded for his lies and failures with the top editor's job at the Atlantic Monthly. Put another way: If Judith Miller was a dweeby Ivy League graduate who worked as a detention camp guard holding Palestinian prisoners, and she never had to answer for her journalistic fraud after being exposed, she would be Jeffrey Goldberg.
THE RECOVERED HISTORY OF JEFFREY GOLDBERG
In the early 1990s, Goldberg served as a prison guard at Ktzi'ot, Israel’s largest detention camp for Palestinian political prisoners. In an interview, Goldbergdescribed his prison guard duty as "not ... an entirely negative experience” and “hopelessly exotic for me." The prison has long been criticized for its inhumane conditions, including frequent beatings, lack of drinking water and forced labor. Among the hundreds of books forbidden to prisoners at Ktzi'ot have been TheLord of the Rings and Hamlet.
In his 2006 book Prisoners, Goldberg described a scene from Ktzi'ot in which his friend repeatedly hit a Palestinian prisoner in the head with a with a heavy, sharp-edged army radio, beating him to a bloody pulp, a beating that Goldberg "deduced was prompted by something [the prisoner] said." Goldberg admits that he lied to cover up the crime: "I found another military policeman, and handed off the wobbling prisoner, who was by now bleeding on me. 'He fell,' I lied."
Goldberg also admitted he took part in beatings of Palestinian prisoners, but justified it this way: "Unlike [Goldberg's camp guard friend], I never hit a Palestinian who wasn't already hitting me."
In 2012, Goldberg denied that he was ever a prison guard: "the actual title of my position was 'prisoner counselor,' believe it or not, which meant that I saw after the culinary, hygiene and medical needs of the prisoners." Yet in his book, Goldberg explicitly states that he was more than just a counselor: "I was a 'prisoner counselor,' a job title that did not accurately reflect my duties in the related fields of discipline and punishment, but which did convey the notion that I was not meant to engage the prisoners solely with pepper spray and barked commands."1
In 1991, right after finishing his prison guard duty, Goldberg wrote an article for the Jerusalem Post titled "More tear gas, please?" in which he explicitly identified himself as an "Israeli" participating in the "armed administration" of Palestinians. "This leaves us, and by us, I mean Israelis of good will, in a quandary: We administer approximately two million people in the occupied territories..." In the same article, Goldberg mocked Palestinian suffering with crude jokes suggesting, for example, "Arab women ... compete in 'Miss Gaza Refugee Camp' and 'Miss Mother Who Sends Her Children into the Street to Catch Israeli Bullets with Their Heads' contests."
After 9/11, Goldberg became one of leading "journalists" responsible for propaganda that drummed up unfounded terrorist fears in order to scare the public into war with Iraq. Goldberg was one of the key Bush administration media assets used to manufacture non-existent links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
In 2002, Goldberg published a two-part fake scare story in the New Yorkeralleging that the Shia Muslim group Hezbollah had penetrated deep into the United States and was, among other things, running a black market cigarette ring on American soil in order to finance its terrorist operations. He also claimed that Iraq and Hezbollah were likely to attack Israel in retaliation for the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq: "Iraq will fire missiles at Israel—perhaps with chemical or biological payloads . . . But Hezbollah . . . might do Saddam’s work itself." Goldberg won a $20,000 "International Investigative Reporting Award" from the Center for Public Integrity for the story.
That same year, in 2002, Goldberg published a New Yorker article—titled "The Great Terror"—that connected Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein through a single extremely unreliable source: a jailed drug dealer provided by Kurdish intelligence. The London Observer interviewed this same prisoner and determined that he was "a liar" and his story "simply not true." But that didn't stop Dick Cheney, who "twice waved around that prisoner’s story in Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece . . . on Sunday talk shows in late 2002" in order to sell the invasion to the American people.
A 2008 MRI scan of Jeffrey Goldberg's brain revealed that photos of Ahmadinejad and Bin Laden lit up his ventral striatum, an area of the brain responsible for processing reward. Although Goldberg claimed to be puzzled by the MRI results, the implication was very clear: Exploiting fear of Iran and terrorism had brought Goldberg big career rewards. In the same experiment, a photo of Atlantic Monthly publisher David Bradley lit up a part of Goldberg's brain normally triggered when a person looks at his own reflection in the mirror.
In 2012, Goldberg took part in a smear campaign initiated by AIPAC against liberal bloggers critical of Israel's policies. Goldberg relied on a quote by a fake anti-Semitism "expert" later scrubbed from existence by the Washington Post to falsely accuse them of anti-Semitism.
Goldberg's shilling for Israel has become increasingly bizarre and fringe-nutcase, so much so that even former Bush admin lackeys and Iraq War boosters like Andrew Sullivan have started bashing him. Goldberg's degeneration has reached a point where he now cites "birther" conspiracy theory websites as credible sources about alleged Iranian plots to destroy Israel.
SHILLS FOR: INVASION OF IRAQ APARTHEID ISRAEL IRAN WAR
“It was hopelessly exotic for me. I mean, I’m from the South Shore of Long Island, and then all of a sudden I’m in the Negev Desert, by the Egyptian border, as a prison guard in what’s probably the largest prison in the Middle East, guarding the future leaders of Palestine. It was pretty exciting.”
—On being a prison guard in an detention camp for Palestinian political prisoners; New Yorker interview; Sept. 25 2006
I had an unusual job at Ketziot. Most soldiers were forbidden to talk to the prisoners. But I was a "prisoner counselor," a job title that did not reflect accurately my duties in the related fields of discipline and punishment . . .
The next president must do one thing, and one thing only, if he is to be judged a success: He must prevent Al Qaeda, or a Qaeda imitator, from gaining control of a nuclear device and detonating it in America. Everything else - Fannie Mae, health care reform, energy independence, the budget shortfall in Wasilla, Alaska - is commentary.
—On the eve of the 2008 U.S. presidential elections Goldberg outlined what he thought was the single most important issue facing the incoming president; The New York Times, Sept. 10, 2008
Soldiers should also be trained to take their behavioral cues not from the macho American movie stars on which they were weaned, but from waiters in pricey restaurants: "Hi, my name's Motti and I'll be arresting you today. Our specials this week are administrative detention without trial and a lovely salad Nicoise. Would you like some fresh ground pepper with your handcuffs?" . . . Of course, when confronted by unrepentant axe-wielding, Molotov cocktail throwers, soldiers should shoot first, act polite later.
—One of Goldberg's suggestions on how to improve Israel's "armed administration" of the Palestinian people; Jerusalem Post, 1991
Goldberg runs a neocon Beltway Torah study group that includes David Brooks, David Gregory and Martin Indyk, an ex-AIPAC official and former U.S. ambassador to Israel. Indyk is also known for coming up with the neocon-designed anti-Iraq/Iran "dual containment" policy the U.S. is still following today. Jeffrey Goldberg was introduced to his future wife by Malcolm Gladwell.
More on Goldberg's prison guard duties here, and his denial here. [↩]
Description accompanying the award: "In this exposé of the crimes of the Iraqi regime, Goldberg described Saddam Hussein's horrifying gas attacks against Kurdish villages, investigated ties between Iraq and al Qaeda terrorists and explored the scope of Iraq's chemical weapons arsenal. Goldberg spent six months on this assignment, often from places that were off limits to western journalists. A former CIA director, James Woolsey, called the story "a blockbuster." [↩]
Updated on March 21, 2017
The following is a reposting of the article written by Goldberg and Shane Harris as published by The Atlantic regarding Goldberg’s experience in what apparently should have been a secure private Signal chat group, as taken from an archived version. The manner in which Goldberg appears to behave with impunity indicates to me that he must be a bought and paid for pundit for the Trump team or at least Hegseth given the evidence, some of which Max shared during their livestream.
On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”
At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”
President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”
These statements presented us with a dilemma. In The Atlantic’s initial story about the Signal chat—the “Hout1hi PC small group,” as it was named by Waltz—we withheld specific information related to weapons and to the timing of attacks that we found in certain texts. As a general rule, we do not publish information about military operations if that information could possibly jeopardize the lives of U.S. personnel. That is why we chose to characterize the nature of the information being shared, not specific details about the attacks.
The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.
Experts have repeatedly told us that use of a Signal chat for such sensitive discussions poses a threat to national security. As a case in point, Goldberg received information on the attacks two hours before the scheduled start of the bombing of Houthi positions. If this information—particularly the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen—had fallen into the wrong hands in that crucial two-hour period, American pilots and other American personnel could have been exposed to even greater danger than they ordinarily would face. The Trump administration is arguing that the military information contained in these texts was not classified—as it typically would be—although the president has not explained how he reached this conclusion.
Yesterday, we asked officials across the Trump administration if they objected to us publishing the full texts. In emails to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the White House, we wrote, in part: “In light of statements today from multiple administration officials, including before the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the information in the Signal chain about the Houthi strike is not classified, and that it does not contain ‘war plans,’ The Atlantic is considering publishing the entirety of the Signal chain.”
We sent our first request for comment and feedback to national-security officials shortly after noon, and followed up in the evening after most failed to answer.
Late yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt emailed a response: “As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat. However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation. This was intended to be a an [sic] internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed. So for those reason [sic] — yes, we object to the release.” (The Leavitt statement did not address which elements of the texts the White House considered sensitive, or how, more than a week after the initial air strikes, their publication could have bearing on national security.)
A CIA spokesperson asked us to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe’s chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the Signal chain, because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified. Ratcliffe had testified earlier yesterday that the officer is not undercover and said it was “completely appropriate” to share their name in the Signal conversation. We will continue to withhold the name of the officer. Otherwise, the messages are unredacted.
As we wrote on Monday, much of the conversation in the “Houthi PC small group” concerned the timing and rationale of attacks on the Houthis, and contained remarks by Trump-administration officials about the alleged shortcomings of America’s European allies. But on the day of the attack—Saturday, March 15—the discussion veered toward the operational.
At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”
The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:
•“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
•“1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”
Let us pause here for a moment to underscore a point. This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.
The Hegseth text then continued:
•“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
•“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
At 1:48 p.m., Waltz sent the following text, containing real-time intelligence about conditions at an attack site, apparently in Sanaa: “VP. Building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job.” Waltz was referring here to Hegseth; General Michael E. Kurilla, the commander of Central Command; and the intelligence community, or IC. The reference to “multiple positive ID” suggests that U.S. intelligence had ascertained the identities of the Houthi target, or targets, using either human or technical assets.
Six minutes later, the vice president, apparently confused by Waltz’s message, wrote, “What?”
At 2 p.m., Waltz responded: “Typing too fast. The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
Vance responded a minute later: “Excellent.” Thirty-five minutes after that, Ratcliffe, the CIA director, wrote, “A good start,” which Waltz followed with a text containing a fist emoji, an American-flag emoji, and a fire emoji. The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified.
Later that afternoon, Hegseth posted: “CENTCOM was/is on point.” Notably, he then told the group that attacks would be continuing. “Great job all. More strikes ongoing for hours tonight, and will provide full initial report tomorrow. But on time, on target, and good readouts so far.”
It is still unclear why a journalist was added to the text exchange. Waltz, who invited Goldberg into the Signal chat, said yesterday that he was investigating “how the heck he got into this room.”
N.B. Houthi/Houthis is a slang term used by pundits to refer to the Yemeni defence group properly named, Ansar Alla. I have never before quoted Newsweek however, they have written a fairly balanced article about Ansar Alla which is a rarity in these days of intense propaganda warfare. See: The Houthis Are Making History in the Most Dangerous Wayby Tom O'Connor; Published Mar 18, 2024 at 11:03 EDT | Updated Mar 21, 2024 at 12:52 PM EDT
